


Rijeka

by drinkbloodlikewine, whiskeyandspite



Series: Supersymmetry Timestamps [1]
Category: London Spy
Genre: Cuckolding, Dancing, Established Relationship, Flirting, M/M, Skinny Dipping, Swimming, Switching, Timestamp, fantasy play, some really hot sex, top!Alex, top!Danny
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-01
Updated: 2016-03-22
Packaged: 2018-05-24 03:06:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 19,483
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6139198
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drinkbloodlikewine/pseuds/drinkbloodlikewine, https://archiveofourown.org/users/whiskeyandspite/pseuds/whiskeyandspite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>They are unbound, his means to ground himself relinquished. Instead, he finds Danny’s fingers curled between his own, held snug until they reach the city center and only then released so as not to darken their day with crude remarks from those who look unkindly on men like them.</i>
</p><p>Set directly post <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/5761453">Supersymmetry</a>, so we highly recommend you read that story first.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [GulliverJ](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GulliverJ/gifts).



“Later,” Danny grins, and Alex frowns.

“Why?”

“The water will have warmed all day,” Danny reasons. “Most of the people with children will have left. And we can watch the sunset over the ocean.”

Alex considers the reasons and inputs them through the turning cogs and gears of his mind. It makes sense. Fewer people and more time together, warm water and a sunset to share. He wonders briefly if he still has something to swim in, it’s been a long time, but Danny’s grin seems to be answer and question enough.

“You need to buy something to swim in,” Alex says.

“So do you.”

“It will take us an hour, by train, if we go only to Rijeka,” Alex considers, forcing himself to leave the travel-time as estimation only, calculations for specificity kept secret. “It’s the nearest city on the Adriatic. But were we to wait as you suggested, stopping in a shop between here and the train to buy swimclothes…”

“We won’t have very much sun.”

“No.”

“So we should stay overnight,” Danny grins, biting his lip. “Maybe two.”

“It’s a resort town, known for its clubs,” Alex warns him, with attention distracted pleasantly by his partner’s effervescent excitement as Danny shoves backward from the bed to seek out their bags. “It could be noisy at night.”

“I’ll tire you out so you sleep,” Danny tells him, stepping closer to kiss Alex chastely on the lips. “We should pack light. No computers. No distractions.”

“Your camera?”

“Of course,” Danny laughs. “Some clothes. Something to change into. Nothing else. Backpack like a real traveller.”

“I’m...” Alex swallows back the gentle protest. He has never backpacked. He enjoys hotels and places where he knows he can lock the door. He is used to walking, yes, hiking and running and exploring, but his base camp has always been… accommodating.

“You’ll be fine,” Danny tells him.

“With you,” Alex says. “Yes.”

This trip isn’t for Alex, and so he quiets his persistent questions about where they’ll stay, should he call ahead and find a room for them, should he, can he, is it alright if he… He stops. A deep and meditative breath cools the internal systems overheating with new processors. This trip is for Danny, and his love of adventure. This trip is to please him, and by proxy, allow Alex to enjoy his wild and free-wheeling delight.

They pack together, and Alex takes guidance from him. Clothes and toiletries, fluffy towels from the bathroom that Alex knows will spill sand in their bags and all across the floor upon their return. Sand can be swept. Towels can be shaken and washed of sea-salt. Danny’s wide, crooked grin and little kisses are worth suppressing Alex’s mild alarm, and he smiles each time his lover’s lips sweep across his cheek.

Alex locks his computer away in the safe they’ve installed, a slender thing beneath the floorboards of their bed. Danny doesn’t interrupt him as he checks and rechecks, sets the door flush back to meet the boards, steps back and regards it, and then finally moves the bed atop. Danny’s laptop gets shoved in the drawer of Alex’s desk, carrying far less sensitive data in it and far more pornography.

When they leave, Alex again paying close attention to each lock in return, the last one clicks closed with a terrifying freedom. They are unbound, his means to ground himself relinquished. Instead, he finds Danny’s fingers curled between his own, held snug until they reach the city center and only then released so as not to darken their day with crude remarks from those who look unkindly on men like them. A sporting goods store is their first stop, music thumping loudly in how Alex imagines the next few nights will sound.

“We don’t have to be here long,” Danny assures him, laughing as he leads the way to the swimwear section, deftly shifting around shop assistants and shoppers alike. “When’s the train?”

“Half past two,” Alex tells him, and Danny checks his phone with a grin.

“Plenty of time.”

Alex lifts his eyes to the clock above the counter as they pass it and notes that it is ten to two. Another breath to calm the panic that rises with the fear of being late, even though no one and nothing awaits them but the sea. He can do this, this carefree life that Danny so enjoys and thrives on. He can let himself go enough to feel the adrenaline spike at possibly missing the train, at not knowing where they will stay the night, at not knowing what to buy here.

He watches Danny gather two or three pairs of shorts from the rack for himself, turning to tilt his head and narrow his eyes at his friend.

“Wanna come in with me?”

Alex shoulders their bags higher, cheeks warming to dusky rose as he glances to his left and then his right.

"I don't think that's allowed," he advises. "Changing rooms are intended to be single-occupancy, otherwise there's a risk of collusion with intent to shoplift and -"

"Not what I asked," Danny grins. "Do you want to come with me?"

Surely they'll find themselves in trouble for it. It's uncouth at best, criminal perhaps, though Alex's familiarity with the legal stratifications of certain misdemeanors in Croatia is admittedly lacking. They may be suspected of attempting theft, held and questioned until they could prove innocence. If nothing else, they'd certainly miss the train.

His heart squeezes faster, and he nods.

"Grab a couple, then," Danny tells him with a rakish wink as he turns. "Meet me in there."

Alex watches him go and takes up a pair like those he wore when used the pool after hours at MI6. Calculating quickly for sizing conversion, he finds them a likely fit, and seeks after Danny with practiced ease in his steps. There's no one there, waiting outside to keep an eye on things. Just a few doors, and at the counter far-off, several disinterested youths laughing and arguing loudly.

"Danny?" Alex whispers.

A door is yanked open towards the back of the changing room, and Danny bounds from it wearing nothing but some dark blue swimming shorts that cover most of the length of his thighs. He grasps against Alex’s shirt and pulls him towards the little changing room before he closes the door.

“Blue ones or grey ones?” He asks, before Alex even has a chance to steady himself. Danny holds up the grey ones he isn’t wearing against his chest, then lowers them over the blue ones that sit comfortable on his hips. “Or both?”

“I haven’t even looked at you in them. There isn’t room…”

Danny steps back as he can, and Alex takes him in - the colors first, fabric hanging loose and comfortable from his skinny form. Both are lovely on him, accenting his eyes to highlight different levels of pigmentation in his irises. The grey makes his eyes more blue, and the blue shorts bring out pale grey. Alex doesn’t ask why he’s taken his shirt off, but allows instead a simple gratitude that he has chosen to do so, however unnecessary.

“I found black ones,” Alex manages. “If you wore grey, we’d be in monochrome together.”

“Show me.”

Alex holds them up, a single hanger and scarcely anything hanging from it. Sleek black spandex, smaller even than the slim-fitting briefs he wears. Danny parts his lips, cheeks hot, and shakes his head.

“You don’t like them,” Alex asks. “I can put them back. I don’t have to swim at all if you’d rather -”

“You should put them on,” is all Danny manages, his voice a little rough before he clears his throat and slips his own shorts from his body, his underwear on beneath as is regulation. He slips into the grey ones next and snaps the elastic around his waist before looking up at Alex, expectant, lip between his teeth and smile warming his eyes. “Please.”

Alex wants terribly to touch him, the thought coiling tight and naughty in his stomach. It would be wholly inappropriate here, and were they caught any closer to _in flagrante_ than they stand already, the treatment they might expect would be extraordinarily unkind. Danny bites his lip again and Alex cracks, lifting a hand to rest against the waistband of the shorts Danny wears.

“They look nice on you,” he says. His hand remains in place as Danny turns beneath it, a sleek pivot to allow Alex to take in the backside, in particular. He does, and with a sound snared to choked silence in his throat, he decides that perhaps it is wise to try on his suit, if only to distract his hands.

“Grey it is, then,” Danny says, stripping down to his pants once more as Alex does the same, toeing off his shoes to slip his trousers down his legs and step out of them. The suit is small, and his pants peek around the edges of it as Alex settles it against his hips but the sight holds Danny entirely in thrall. He cannot look away from him.

Alex swallows. “What do you think?” When Danny just blinks, Alex fights down a smile and clears his throat. “Danny?”

“Get them,” Danny murmurs. “Several pairs.”

“Why would I need -”

“I don’t know if I’ll be able to resist not yanking these off you with my teeth later,” Danny admits, laughing, pressing a hand to his face. “And I might rip them then.”

Alex squints, though hardly with misgivings. He waits for the moment that Danny’s eyes lower again, and with a palm flat against his stomach, Alex lifts his shirt a little higher. Lip bitten, Danny mutes an eager noise in his throat.

“I might need to shave a little,” Alex considers. “When I swam for my college, I removed all of it to prevent any additional drag during competition. Removing that resistance matters only tenths of seconds, but there was a psychological switch that triggered when I committed that time to shaving entirely. Preparation, as if girding for war.” He pauses. “It’s been some time since I’ve been in a pool, though. What do you think?”

He lifts his eyes to Danny, smile curving wide at his partner’s expression.

The blush is over Danny’s cheeks, across his nose, darkening the freckles there. His eyes themselves are blown wide with pupil and need. Danny’s throat works as he swallows before he laughs again and presses a hand between his legs to rub his erection to a more comfortable position in his trousers.

“Holy hell,” he sighs. “You’ll have to tell me more about the swim team.”

“I was on the varsity team for -”

“On the train,” Danny warns him, grinning. “Else we’ll miss it altogether. Come on. We need to… need to buy those.”

“And yours.”

“And mine.”

“Get the blue as well as the grey,” Alex tells him, slipping his suit off and stepping into his trousers again. “Maybe I’ll have to peel yours off of you too.”

Danny grins, delighted, entirely in love with the man across from him. As soon as he’s standing upright again, trousers fastened, he steps close and kisses Alex deep, holding the back of his head with his hand until both part for breath. Alex steps against him, seemingly immense, and Danny tucks his arms between them as Alex hugs him close, lips against his brow.

“You’re missing your shirt,” he murmurs.

“I can’t well put it on when you’ve got me like this.”

“No, that would be difficult.”

“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?” Danny scolds him warmly, nose wrinkling as he rubs the tip of it against Alex’s chest hair. “Naughty thing. Don’t shave this. I don’t care about the resistance.”

“Alright.”

“Alright.”

Danny grins and squirms free as Alex releases him. They dress and leave one at a time, Alex first to seek out another pair of racing briefs. Feeling brave and somewhat scandalous, he first lifts a pair in rich royal purple, and then decides he’s not _that_ brave and chooses red instead. He meets Danny on the way to the register, a look exchanged but nearly arm’s length between them. He’s learned that outside highly specific areas, Zagreb’s attitude towards homosexual affection is akin to that in poor parts of London. No one dares do anything, but they raise a fuss as if they might. It’s an irritation, and it upsets Danny to the point of aggression.

Easier, then, to keep apart when they’re not certain they won’t be harangued.

Danny sets his hip against the counter, carrying his own bag for now. They set their things together and the spotty boy behind the counter pauses only a moment before starting to ring them up. The brief words that Alex exchanges with him are in Croatian, and good Croatian at that it seems, if the boy’s flicker of surprise is anything to go by. Danny watches Alex, though, with fascination. He smiles broadly. His shoulders loosen. He stands with weight off-set to one hip. Muscle by muscle, from those in his face down to his feet, he becomes someone other than the regal, commanding man that Danny knows best.

Rarely does Danny remember that Alex was a spy, but in moments like this it’s hard to see how he could ever forget.

Though shy, Alex is rarely not confident in himself. He knows what he knows, and he understands that he knows it well. But seeing him confident with people is novel and genuinely wonderful. Danny can’t take his eyes off of him. Alex pays and takes their bag, and sends the young cashier a smile that is returned. Danny follows Alex out the door hiding a grin behind his hand.

“The train leaves in twenty minutes,” Alex tells him and Danny affects a sage nod in answer. “We should hurry.”

“I want to kiss you so hard right now,” Danny murmurs, moving to keep step with Alex as they make their way to the station.

The admission alone is enough to make Alex smile again, genuinely surprised - always - that someone so astounding would. And does. And wants to, often. He’s yet to entirely accept it, in some ways. There are days when Alex emerges from the depths of his work, brought back by a gentle hand against his back or a kiss pressed to his hair, and he can do no more than look at the dark-haired, wide-eyed, wonderful man in disbelief.

Alex knows he’s difficult. He has spent a lifetime dissecting why and found the discord irreconcilable with the expectations of others. But Danny is patient, energetic, and bright. He doesn’t find Alex strange, or to be precise, he enjoys that he is. Alex in turn finds that he breathes easier, like breaking through the wall during a long run, in the presence of someone so unaccountably warm.

“Please do,” Alex finally says, stopping.

“We’re going to miss the train,” Danny laughs, but when Alex remains where he is, light and shadow spilling downward on him from the park’s trees alongside them, Danny turns to face him. In an instant he takes him in. In an instant he’s back again, pressing their lips quickly together, standing on his toes. Danny grins and squeezes his arm, and only then does Alex follow him to the station.

The train arrives on time and they slip in, finding seats that face each other, taking up those not by the windows with their bags. As the train begins to move, Danny pushes his feet into Alex’s lap, not bothering to slide his shoes off. He watches him, this stunning man, blink at him and smile without moving his lips at all, before turning his head to the window to look outside.

It takes the hour Alex predicted in the flat, and both settle into comfortable silence as they ride, listening to the metronomic strike of the wheels on the rails, listening to the other breathe in the beats in between. Beyond, through the window, they watch the sky grow warm with the settling afternoon, painting the landscapes they see in soft tints of ochre and peach. Danny dozes, he knows he does because Alex wakes him when the train stops, and Danny kisses the palm of his hand.

“Did I snore?”

“Not that I heard.”

“Oh good,” Danny draws a hand over his eyes and grins. “Nothing more embarrassing than admitting you’re traveling with the snoring guy.”

“I wouldn’t be embarrassed,” Alex says. Danny rubs the warmth from his cheeks but it doesn’t fade, darkening as his smile spreads.

“I know you wouldn’t.”

Alex takes up both their bags, and the one from the shop. These little shows of affection - the ‘nice guy’ nonsense that Danny has bucked from most every partner he’s ever had - are so innate in Alex as to be unintentional. He doesn’t do it because he thinks Danny can’t. He doesn’t do it to pigeonhole him into a certain role or power dynamic. Those thoughts would never cross Alex’s mind, when his only intention is to be helpful and his only motivation is kindness.

An actual gentleman, rather than one who wields the word as a weapon.

Danny then is happy to trot alongside him from the station, skipping forward across bricklaid sidewalk and breathing deep. He stretches wide and grunts pleasure in the sun’s heat and salty air. There are many here, of countless languages and originations, but Alex is not uncomfortable in crowds and Danny outright revels in the prickling energy in the air.

“We’re not at the beach yet,” Alex says, as Danny unzips his hoodie. Danny pauses, then shrugs it off, holding it over his arm.

“It’s warm, though.”

“Yes.”

“Warmer than London would be.”

“We’re closer to the equator.”

Alex asks for directions from an older couple, but damned if Danny can tell whether it’s to the water or to a hotel. He hopes the former, and expects the latter, but listens to the rough heat of German with delight either way.

Alex is extraordinary. More so for the fact that he doesn’t know it, that he doesn’t believe it when Danny tells him. He smiles and the couple smiles in turn, pointing and waving to Alex as they pass by. It is comfortable. It is warm and perfect and Danny wants to hook his arm through Alex’s and lean against him and not let him go. He settles on shoving him gently with his shoulder instead.

In true Alex fashion, the hotel is first. Danny bounces on the balls of his feet as Alex makes their reservation and pays for their room. He grins as they seek for it and deposit unnecessary things on the enormous bed. He pulls Alex into a kiss again, stumbling and snorting as he does, and lips pressing in noisy little squeezes over and over.

“We should change into them,” he says. “Take clothes with us to wear there and back. A towel.”

“Not two?”

“We can share,” Danny decides.

“Two, then,” Alex says, drawing a breath in time with Danny’s own, and soothing him with murmured words against his lips. “One to share on the sand, and one with which to dry ourselves.”

Danny kisses him lingering, as retribution for his rationality, and parts with an unsteady step backwards and a grin, dropping back onto the bed. He splays his hands behind himself, and no sooner moves a muscle than Alex takes a knee and lace by lace undoes Danny’s sneakers to slide them free. Alex’s gaze brushes against Danny’s own and away again, head ducked shyly to lift his other foot and bare it in turn.

“You’ll get sand in them if you wear them to the beach,” he says, fighting down a smile.

“Good thing I brought your shower sandals then, and my - well, not-shower sandals,” Danny beams, and Alex laughs low.

“I’d forgotten. I wasn’t paying attention.”

“How does it feel?”

“To not pay attention?”

“Yeah. Rather than too much attention, to everything.”

Alex slides the second shoe free and sets it neatly beside its partner, strong hands curling against Danny’s socked foot. His thumb rubs firm strokes and he squeezes in an absent-minded massage. After a moment, he shrugs a single shoulder. “Fine,” he decides, eyes drawing up with a smile. “Especially since you were paying attention in my absence.”

Bending above him, Danny grasps Alex’s wide jaw in his hands and lifts his mouth to meet in a kiss. Both of his encircle Alex’s bottom lip. Teeth press and Alex hums heavily.

“I love you,” Alex tells him, nuzzling alongside Danny’s nose, eyes closed. “I’d go anywhere with you.”

“I love you,” answers Danny with a smile so wide it aches. Finally he just laughs, kissing the bridge of Alex’s nose and releasing him. “But for now, you’ve only got to go the beach, you great distraction.”

They undress with little tomfoolery beyond sly glances towards the other’s body. Now and then they catch the other, quickly turning away when they do. Alex keeps his back to Danny as he bares his bottom and slides stretching tall into his racing briefs. He looks back just in time to see the dark hair above Danny’s cock disappear beneath his trunks. Both grin but neither let on more than that, dressing loosely and taking the bag from the sporting goods shop to carry their towels and hold their clothes.

Trousers and a loose shirt each and they are on their way.

The throngs of people grow denser the closer to the beach they get, yet neither seem perturbed. The day is still warm despite the worst of the heat being behind them. The water reflects like crystal as they see it and Danny makes a sound of such childish delight that Alex startles a little, just watching his friend respond to something as simple and as vast as the ocean.

This is nothing like the water surrounding the UK. This water is beyond blue. It’s clear and warm and almost unreal. It’s the stuff of fairytale faraway lands right here before them. Danny grasps Alex’s hand and tugs him on and doesn’t care when he stumbles in the sand, jumping a moment on one foot then the other to get his sandals off so he can make his way from here barefoot.

Alex laughs, louder than he perhaps ever has before, catching Danny’s shoes as they fall forgotten behind him. His shirt too is tossed behind and Alex catches it from the wind. Finally Danny trips and falls laughing as he tries to wriggle out of his trousers, and Alex approaches with long steady strides and stands above him, casting a shadow over the squinting man beneath him.

“I fell,” Danny grins, arching upward to shed his trousers in a way that jerks Alex’s heart faster.

“I see that.”

“Will you help me up?”

“Should I?” Alex asks, brows raised. Danny laughs and rolls to his stomach, pushing back onto all fours and squirming out of his trousers. Alex watches in nothing less than amazement at the energy in him, adoring every little wriggle and twist that finally bares Danny down to his swim trunks.

He offers him a hand and Danny takes it, both working together to bring him to his feet. Alex ducks to pick up his trousers for him too but his lips are held in a hot swath of affection, and Alex hums softly into their kiss. They share it openly, polite English propriety forgotten, and when no snarls or curses come their way, Alex sweeps his tongue past Danny’s lips once just to taste his joy.

“I’ll set up the towel,” he murmurs when they part, smile drawing up his eyes as Danny grins and barrels for the glass-clear sea.

Alex watches him, watches until he hits the water with a splash, shouts his joy and dives into the shallows, disappearing beneath the water. Alex finds a spot that seems unoccupied and sets their things down. He takes his time to flick the towel out and press the corners down with rocks he finds nearby. He half-buries their bag beneath the sand and beneath the towel, their clothes stuffed within.

Stretching in just his swim briefs, Alex allows his muscles to go loose and comfortable. He thinks of the rigorous training for the swim team, but how free he had felt in that water when no one cared about him or his mind or his abilities, just how fast he could slice through the water, and if he could keep to the relay requirements. He lost himself in that pool, swimming through it, sinking to the bottom of it after every race when the other boys clambered free.

He starts to make his way towards the water, where Danny splashes like a boy half his age, grinning at Alex and waving at him to hurry. His toes spread in the sand as he picks up speed, and as the water hits him cold and refreshing, so does Danny, yanking him into the water with a shrill yell until both are under and the sound is muffled.

Alex’s lungs are capable, full with oxygen the measure of which he can mark down to the heartbeat. Danny, against him, is a scrambling sprawl of limbs and bubbles and muted sounds, surfacing to gasp another breath as Alex simply sinks lower. His bottom touches the sand beneath and he blinks at the form that reveals itself, blurry but clarifying as Danny comes closer to him.

He catches Danny, a hand against his neck and the other on his back. Danny clutches his arms and holds as Alex turns him spiralling in the clean, clear sea. Their eyes meet, Danny’s wide, and no more than a nod expresses question and consent.

Alex seals his lips over Danny’s own and as Danny breathes in, Alex exhales. An instant held weightless, suspended in glittering sunlight and shifting waves, firm bodies gliding slick together. An instant, only, before Danny sputters and Alex loses his count and both shove to the surface and emerge with a gasp.

Listening to Danny’s choking laughter, Alex grins, sweeping his hair back from his face and steadying his pulse. Danny’s curls drape thick in front of his eyes and beneath, a wide grin despite his coughing.

“I can’t remember the last time I swam in the ocean,” Danny manages after a while, running a hand through his hair to slick it back against his head. Even then it sits unruly, not plastered down but curling and already drying in the warm sun above them. It will be rough with salt when they get back to the hotel, and for the days that they stay here. It will lighten a little in the sun, too, just as Alex’s will.

His hair would go white in summers when he spent them by the sea as a boy.

“I had to train in the ocean,” Alex says. “Paddling against the waves is very difficult. They test for endurance and speed both when they set you to the waves.”

“The swim team?” Danny asks.

“MI6,” Alex clarifies, smiling when Danny does. “I don’t think I could do it now, though.”

“Liar,” Danny laughs.

Alex’s smile quirks. “I don’t think that I am.”

“A liar?”

“About this,” he considers, strong arms sweeping wide as he keeps himself afloat. “Or generally. I’m not as fit as I was.”

“Piss off,” Danny laughs, loud and bright. “Are you absolutely mad? You run every morning, you do your - I don’t know - what is it?”

“Calisthenics.”

“Calisthenics,” Danny grins, “every night in the garden. You’re the fittest person I know.”

“I’m the only person you know now,” says Alex, but the words don’t sound the way he means them to and he sucks his bottom lip between his teeth. It tastes of salt and he licks it lightly before releasing it with a sigh. “When we were done swimming laps against the waves, we had to run on the shore.”

“You like running.”

Alex doesn’t thank him aloud for allowing the unintentional unkindness to pass, but their eyes meet and it’s enough of an exchange to each know. He stretches a hand out and Danny takes it, and Alex reels him in closer. “Not on sand,” he admits. “I didn’t care for that at all. It’s much more strenuous. I’d always get a cramp in my calf the next morning.”

Danny wraps his arms around Alex’s neck and Alex holds him with an arm around his waist. He leans back and kicks lightly, sweeping with his free arm to bear them both away from the shore, against the gentle waves. Danny neither helps nor hinders, content to turn his nose against Alex’s cheek as he’s carried away against his friend.

“I used to love going swimming in the local pool,” Danny says. “Was never any good at it - not enough to swim in competitions - but I learned how to paddle pretty quick. I always liked swimming on my back.”

“Backstroke.”

“Backstroke,” Danny agrees, finally unfurling his legs to lazily kick in the water too, carefully avoiding Alex’s so they don’t tangle. “I liked looking up at the ceiling and imagining what shapes I could find in the perforated tiles up there.”

“Did you ever find any?”

“Loads,” Danny replies with a sigh, so content that he could fall asleep, right then and there. He kisses against Alex’s skin and holds him close.

Alex tightens his stomach and rocks backward. It requires movement, still, hardly the dead man’s float to which he’s accustomed with Danny’s weight laid against his chest, but Alex doesn’t mind. It makes him feel productive, useful - necessary, even, that his gently kicking feet and broad sidelong strokes keep them above the water. He smiles against Danny’s hair, wet and salty and drying wild where it’s above the waves, and tucks a small and secret kiss against those strands.

“Are you happy here?” Alex asks, this time without a computer humming beside them. Danny nods, smile pressed against Alex’s chest where the water sluices softly across his skin. Though he can hardly read people as Danny does, that innate skill never his to experience, Alex does not need a computer to know the truth.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“Dancing?”_
> 
> _“Yes.”_
> 
> _“Now?”_
> 
> _“Yes,” Danny laughs. “Now."_

They lay together in the waves, as the sun touches the sea and the sky shifts from cerulean to copper to crimson. Only when Alex’s stomach tires, the rest of his muscles still working piston-steady, does he whisper for Danny to hold his breath, and he turns them both beneath the water. Danny clutches to him, and Alex grasps him close. They don’t share breath this time, but beneath sun-warmed waters they meet the other’s mouth in boyish closed kisses squeezed tight and smiling.

Danny’s fingers curve against Alex’s back. Nails scraping over firm muscle, their legs clatter and tangle together until Danny finally hooks a thigh against his hip and Alex snares him beneath the knee. A sinuous twist brings their groins together, illicit and delightful, before Alex shoves hard against Danny’s leg to push him deeper, and rockets backward with swift kicks.

They’re a mess of limbs and twisting, Danny coming up for air much more often than Alex must. They pull the other’s ankles and dunk them beneath. They grasp and squirm and laugh, unashamed of their childish horseplay. Around them, the number of people grows smaller, but they are not alone on the beach to enjoy the sunset. Danny catches Alex around the neck and holds on as the man hoists him on his back as he would a child.

“Gotcha,” Danny whispers, and Alex laughs, stroking thumbs against his calves beneath the water.

Above them, the sky changes moment by moment. Gradients of red and gold and paler pinks mingle and shift until the sky begins to bruise violet and lilac, to heady indigos and navy blues.

“It’s incredible,” Danny whispers, nuzzling against Alex, arms wrapped around his neck and nose in his hair.

It feels so innocent, and Alex attributes it entirely to Danny. To use metaphysical terms, however unscientific, he has an aura about him. Despite the experiences he’s had, good and bad, despite how he feels about them himself, he is to Alex unalterably pure of heart. Moments like this, playful and fond and together, are Alex’s favorite, as both enjoy a youth that neither knew before they found each other.

Without letting him slip further into the water, Alex slowly and carefully brings Danny from his back to his front. It’s done with the kind of strength and focus that makes Danny dizzy, happy to let it happen, happier still to be face to face with him. He curls his legs around Alex’s waist and hooks his heels together, laughing as Alex turns his back to the sunset. Blazing scarlet, the sun’s utmost curve glows radiant just above the sea.

“Now you can still watch,” says Alex. “And I can watch you.”

“But you can’t see it now.”

“I don’t need to,” Alex answers, smile lifting his eyes.

Danny snorts, charmed, always charmed, by a man who does not at all see himself as charming. It's criminal. But as much as Danny hopes one day Alex will understand how truly miraculous he is, he also hopes he never does. Most of it comes from his lack of awareness - this particular blind spot. Most of it comes from being so sweetly naive.

“Will we find our way when it gets dark?” Danny asks.

“To the shore?”

“Mhm.”

“I’m sure we can manage,” Alex tells him, rubbing his hips against Danny’s as he holds him close.

Danny rests his chin on Alex’s shoulder, arms and legs wrapped tightly around, Alex’s hands on his back to keep him secure. The sun sparks luminous, flashing brightly green before it disappears beneath the sea. Danny’s pleasure is equalled only by the brilliant heat sparking just as beautiful between their bodies as Alex ruts slowly against him again.

“It turned green. Just now, the sun turned green.”

“Refraction, made more intense by clear sky and watching at sea level,” Alex says, slyly slipping his hands lower to curve beneath Danny’s bottom. “Being in the sea,” he adds, correcting himself from his evident distraction.

Danny snorts and squeezes his legs obediently tighter around Alex. He is lovely this way. Smart and smug and playful. There are no inhibitions in the sea, no one to look or judge, just an eternal green and teal that is older than time itself. What does it care for their youthful indiscretions?

“Your hands,” Danny points out, amused. “A little lower please.”

“Lower?” Alex raises an eyebrow and works his fingers gently against the soft curve of skin where thigh meets ass, covered only slightly by the swim trunks Danny wears.

“Lower,” Danny tells him, before leaning in to kiss Alex again.

Alex doesn't care about the sun or its mirages now, nor the slow approach of night overhead that will soon be pierced by stars. He doesn't care about anything but the man clinging to him, sleek-bodied and beautiful. Lips parting, Alex curves his hands lower to Danny's thighs, and tucks his fingers under the hem of his shorts.

"Higher, now," Danny murmurs, arching as Alex seeks beneath the floating fabric. His breath shortens with every inch upward Alex presses, and tilts outright to a moan when Alex grasps his ass with hard hards. Squeezing, spreading, in what little room there is to move within, Alex pulls Danny closer against him.

"Do you want to? You know..." Alex's words falter and he laughs, helpless to even speak clearly now. His erection held trapped by only a thin swath of synthetic blend, Danny's own tending his shorts, and both washed against by the sea at his back - it’s absurd. It’s exceedingly inappropriate.

It’s wonderful, and with little mind for who sees, Alex kisses his friend.

Danny snorts, delighted by Alex’s sudden confidence with this. He would. He has had sex in stranger and far less lovely places with far less interesting people. But even with that in mind, this moment remains a lovely tease for him - he doesn’t need more.

“Just touch me,” Danny whispers, seeking down Alex’s back with one hand and down his chest with the other. Deliberately and gently tugging the hair there until he hums in response. “I love you.”

“I love you,” Alex says in return, with only warmth and without hesitation. The hesitation comes in satisfying Danny's request, and Danny searches between Alex's eyes as he wars with himself. He does want this, here and now. His arousal aches with fullness despite the newness of context. But he asked, and that isn't what Danny wants, so that isn't what's going to happen. Even though Alex wants it.

Even though Alex wants it very much.

Danny tries not to smile at the hidden calculations taking place before him. For a moment he wonders if this is when it will finally happen - if this is the point that Alex finally _does_ , rather than defers. Danny could laugh when he's simply kissed instead, and Alex eases his fingers back from within his pants to instead stroke softly over the tender skin below his bottom.

Arching their mouths together, Danny strokes again fingers splayed through Alex's chest hair. Fingernails curl and drag, Alex's chest widening as the sensation pushes breath into his lungs. It’s absurd that he wouldn’t think himself fit, and Danny can scarcely imagine what he looked like before if this is his idea of out-of-shape. He skims his fingers over defined muscle and water-slick skin, shivering as Alex’s hands squeeze lightly around his thighs. Alex stands serene, nearly stoic, as Danny leans into another soft sweep of lips. As Danny coils against him. As Danny seeks stroking over broad chest and stiffened nipples and down his flat belly.

Danny leans back and arches a brow at the complete lack of response. "Are you sulking?"

"No," Alex smiles, just before he grasps Danny's legs and upturns him into the water.

With a shriek, Danny falls, sputtering in the water, but his upheaval isn’t a deterrent to his own mischief, and hooking an elbow around the back of Alex’s knee he brings him down in turn. They splash and laugh, squirming from the other’s grasp, and move, thus, closer to shore.

“Yield,” Danny laughs, slicing his arms through the water and showering Alex in warm salty spray.

“I shan't,” comes the petulant reply, and Danny’s smile grows wider hearing the true childish delight in Alex’s tone. Not the stoic presence he maintains near everywhere else, but an earnest need and want and ache to act his age, live his age, if only for a moment. A firm hand snares his ankle, and Danny’s reflexive kick is easily ducked. Fingers digging into sand, saltwater sputtering his laugh, he pushes backward as Alex tries to drag him back into the surface.

As Danny slides downward, Alex slinks upward. Waves rushing up beneath Danny’s back, foaming white around their waists, Alex lifts his eyes to the beach at large. But for a few stragglers, far off, they are alone as the rest of the beach’s patrons retire to seek out entertainment for the evening.

“Yield?” Alex asks, almost absently. He holds himself above Danny, hands planted in sucking sand on either side of his head and knees just touching his thighs.

Danny shakes his head and bites his lip. “Only if you come dancing with me.”

“Dancing?”

“Yes.”

“Now?”

“Yes,” Danny laughs. “Now. As soon as we dry off.”

“The salt will dry on our skin,” Alex considers, sweeping a hand across Danny’s brow and squeezing the receding waters from his curls. “Our hair will be -”

“Wild?”

“Untidy.”

Danny curls his hands around the back of Alex’s arms, squeezing the hard muscles there just to feel their resistance. He arches upward and draws his nose up Alex’s neck and beneath his chin, kissing him languidly when Alex ducks his head. From the other’s lips they suckle salt; from their tongue, they lick the sun-warmed sea. Alex bears down firmer against his friend, coiling skinny limbs against his body in an unsubtle effort to squirm free. Heart pounding in boyish freedom, sleek forms sliding slick together, Alex parts their lips with a moan.

“I’ll go,” Alex agrees, voice low, “only if you yield for me after.”

Danny curses softly and draws up his knees around him. He knows it is in no way deliberately manipulative, but he is also fully aware of just how quickly Alex caught his attention with the words. But it is a fair trade, in truth, taking Alex dancing only to have to wait to feel him against himself in bed.

“I’ll yield,” Danny promises, kissing Alex one more time before slipping from beneath him and kneeling in the sand. His limbs ache now that they are out of the comfort of the weightlessness in which the sea held them. They tremble wonderfully as much from Alex’s words as genuine exhaustion. 

But he will dance.

And so will Alex, beautiful thing that he is.

Danny holds his hand out for Alex to take, and stands them both up.

“Is it a poor time to tell you that I’ve no idea how to dance,” Alex asks. “At least in any contemporary sense?”

He dusts the sand from his legs, from his belly and his bottom, and finally stands into a long stretch. Arms overhead, toes splayed and pointed into the sand, Danny tries not to watch and fails entirely as every muscle in his lover’s body stretches tight beneath sun-darkened skin still glittering damp. Bare but for his little racing briefs, pulled taut as bow-string between his hips, Danny follows the fluffy sand-speckled hair below his navel lower still as Alex grunts his pleasure and drops his eyes. Their gazes meet and part - both pleased, both shy - to have caught the other watching.

“Have you ever tried?” Danny asks, as they slip into their clothes.

“No.”

“Then of course you’ve no idea how to do it,” Danny says, smile widening. “You’ve never tried.”

Alex blinks, stilled briefly in his motions by the recollection of a conversation held seemingly long ago, and in wholly different circumstances. Both exhausted by their flight from London, picking their way through a supermarket beneath buzzing fluorescent lights. Alex told Danny he could be good at guitar.

So perhaps if he tries, he’ll be able to dance a little too.

Alex laces their fingers together and keeps them twined as they return to their hotel to drop off their things. More comfortable shoes, a jacket for Alex and another loose shirt for Danny. Some cologne, spread by each across the other’s throat, and they are out the door once more, into the city lit only by the embers of the sky.

Danny doesn’t know the clubs here. He still remembers his haunts in London, knows which clubs are lenient on busy Fridays, which were the easiest to buy into, which had the best music after four and let their favorites stay after the rest were kicked out for the night. Here, he is blind in navigating, but he tugs Alex along with a grin, following his ears and the way his heart pounds to the music seeping through closed club doors.

They could go to a slower place, reggae beats to allow Alex to understand how his body moves to the music. Perhaps house would let Alex unwind. But Danny knows that what will truly move them both is something that hits that magic number, the music that will wind their heartbeats up to 128 beats per minute and control them entirely. 

Alex might have been a varsity swimmer, his body precision-honed by Her Majesty’s Own, but Danny knows dancing like he knows the sound of his own voice. It’s thrilling already that he’ll get to show Alex something new - whether in experience or knowledge or sex, Danny always relishes those moments when he can teach someone who knows so much already. He may not have Alex’s formal education, but that doesn’t mean he’s not clever in his own way. If he ever doubted it, Alex has told him enough times that he is, and Alex doesn’t lie, does he?

Danny strokes his thumb in reassurance over Alex’s knuckles when he feels his fingers tense. The assembled outside this particular place are mostly men, mostly young, mostly beautiful. A teetering old warehouse thudding dull into the ground, brick smeared black with paint and a sign Danny can’t read glows above the door.

“Here,” he decides. “This is the one.”

Alex parts his lips with his tongue. “It says ‘meat locker’. Incorrectly, it should be two words, but -”

“Perfect,” Danny says. “Can you talk to them?”

“To whom?”

“The men at the door.”

“I can,” Alex says. “What about?”

“Getting inside.”

“There’s a queue.”

Danny turns to him and slides a hand to the back of his neck, holding him close enough that the whisper pressed against his ear won’t be heard by anyone but Alex. “Show me what you can do.”

They part slowly, Danny grinning and Alex’s brow piqued. He glances towards the bored-looking, broad-browed man fanning his thumb through his cell phone. Alex would have chosen his appearance differently had he expected this sort of mission. He’s far too formal in his jacket and shined brogues, far too much a tourist like those that make up half the queue. With a moment of consideration, he sheds his jacket and hands it to Danny. Rather than folding his sleeves neatly, in the Italian style, he folds them up once and pushes them to his elbows. The top button on his shirt slips free, and on second thought, the second follows.

He tilts a smile to Danny and turns, ascending the stairs two at a time, and with each one steps into someone else’s mannerisms.

Danny watches, fascinated, as Alex becomes someone else entirely. It is flawless in him, God-given, were Danny inclined to believe in God. He thinks of their conversations late at night, when he asked Alex if he missed his job, what he missed about it. He thinks of Alex’s answer that how in his job he could become anyone at all. He could become normal.

He watches Alex now, hip cocked and one hand on it, fingers splayed in such elegant indifference that Danny knows it was meticulously thought out. To anyone, this Alex - this charming, funny, soft-spoken and clever man - is his real self. And Danny feels a tug, a twitch in his heart knowing that he, Danny, is the only one allowed to see who he truly is.

His Alex and the beautiful shadow before him now.

Alex turns, then, as though sensing that connection, and tilts his head to draw Danny near.

Danny’s not above the slightly smug smile turned towards those still queued as he passes by. He takes Alex’s hand, outstretched, as with his other, Alex claps the doorman on the shoulder with a word of Croatian and a loud laugh. His eyes crinkle in the corners. He shows his teeth when he smiles.

And no sooner do they broach the door than Alex rolls his shoulders and stretches his neck, the mirage of the other fading from his form. He takes his jacket back from Danny with a softer smile, and adjusts his sleeves to tidy them again. Danny bites his lip and grins, leading them towards what he presumes to be the coat check.

“What did you say?” Danny asks.

“He was checking match results on his phone,” Alex says. “I recognized the colors when I caught a glimpse of it, and asked how Dinamo Zagreb fared.”

Danny blinks. “And?”

“I could see that he favors HNK Rijeka, from the smile he gave me when he said they were the victors over Zagreb. I told him there was no shame in losing a point to the superior team and my humility towards the club he favors proved agreeable. He gave me this,” Alex says, handing Danny a folded coupling of drink tickets. “And told us to ‘drink our woes’.”

“You’re incredible,” Danny tells him, laughing, leaning against him and slipping an arm through Alex's as they find the coat check. “Bloody marvellous.”

“It’s liberating,” Alex tells him, smiling. “Being normal.”

Danny catches him, then, tugging him back from handing his coat over, and kisses him deep enough that Alex makes a sound and sets a hand to Danny’s hip.

“You’re perfect,” Danny tells him.

“Hardly,” Alex murmurs, with a glance upward to see if anyone minds their affection. No one pays them any mind, a novel thing in itself, and so he slips his arm firmer around Danny’s waist to hold him close. “Skills learned long ago, for myriad reasons. I pale in compare.”

“To?” Danny grins, pushing to his toes in anticipation of the answer.

“You,” answers Alex, amused. “Innately talented at being extraordinary.”

Danny quiets him with a kiss, smile so wide he can hardly hold their lips together. They part only enough to trade jacket for the ticket they’ll use to retrieve it later, and immediately press together again. Danny rests his shoulder against Alex’s side and Alex rests his arm comfortably over his friend’s shoulder, allowing him to lead the way.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _He told Alex once that he shouldn’t be his only._
> 
> _Alex’s response then resonates with just as much truth now, and a chill that cools his blood._
> 
> _He doesn’t want anyone else. He doesn’t need anyone else._

The music is similar to what Danny was so fond of in London. Quick tempos and multiple beats tease and weave against each other. It is crowded enough to push the temperature inside up several very noticeable degrees, but with enough space between people that they don't have to fight their way through anyone to find a comfortable place to dance.

Danny takes Alex’s hand and leads him on through the throng, lifting their arms up above the heads of those dancing so as not to lose their grip or get tangled. Already Danny can feel this pulse and power and heat infuse his blood and push his heart to a faster rhythm. Already he can feel the urge to tug Alex close and dance for hours against him.

Alex goes where he’s lead, pale eyes scanning quick across the moving mass of bodies. If the lights were high and the music quiet, it would be difficult to take in the space with any quality surveillance. It is nearly impossible to do so when the entire floor is roiling light crashing against discordant rhythms, exploding through the forms beneath.

A hand against his cheek startles and soothes him, all at once, and as he turns, Danny offers him a smile that spreads into a laugh, lost to the music. Alex tucks a kiss against his palm before it slips away and Danny catches him by the shirt, dragging him to a space all their own. Perhaps he should have emphasized to Danny how very unpracticed he is at dancing in places like this, to music like this. Perhaps he should have made his lack of skill emphatic.

And then Danny careens his body in an unwieldy twist, hair fanning wild around his sun-splashed cheeks, and it’s as if the entire room slows and fades but for him. Alex draws a breath and Danny draws him closer. They pin together and as in sex, as increasingly in life, Alex follows Danny’s guidance.

Danny dances like no one is watching him. He whirls and twists and tosses his hair. He pulls Alex close and turns against him, shoulders to chest, grinding back, before he is off again, at arm's length for Alex to catch.

Alex feels, beat by beat, his apprehension seep away. Danny does not move his body in any conventional way. He just moves because he can’t not. Alex follows him because he can’t not. Movement by movement he lets his muscles relax, he lets his arms raise and his head drop back and his eyes close. Alex lets himself breathe against the heat of the room and lets his lungs fill with the power of it all.

He goes when Danny drags him closer, he moves when Danny moves him and then he pulls away. Just enough for Danny to seek next, a give and take, a reciprocation of everything and anything between them.

Then Danny snares his arms around Alex’s neck and leans in close enough to kiss. Alex catches him around the waist with one arm. The other hand pushes up into his hair. He bends him back in a dip far too formal for a place like this, but Danny only laughs against his lips and kisses him again. Their mouths spread and gather, sliding smooth against the other. On their lips, the taste of sea salt lingers until they kiss it away.

“You’re beautiful,” Alex tells him, the words spoken against Danny’s ear so he can hear. “Everyone around us thinks so.”

“Shut up,” grins Danny, twirling to his toes as Alex rights him and spins him once. He snares him back against just as quickly, and forces himself to not think, to not plan, to simply move in time with Danny’s body.

“They’re trying to act as if they’re not watching you, but they are. You don’t dance like anyone else here.”

“I’m terrible.”

“You’re incredible.”

Danny laughs and pulls free again, for just a moment. The music catches his arms, brings them up in a sharp clap before he shakes them as though to clear water from his fingers. He laughs when Alex looks at him. This is a game, this is a show, this is a silly way for Danny to have Alex believe that he isn’t good at dancing and isn't worth watching.

Alex waits.

He snares Danny when he's near again and kisses him, smearing his lips against Danny’s cheek when he turns his head.

He lets him go.

He waits.

And when Danny forgets to play and forgets to pretend, then he flies again, then he is caught by the music and held tight, eyes closed and lips parted and entirely truly extraordinary in his beauty.

Alex tells him he loves him, though the words are lost to ceaseless thumping beats that resound through the floors. Danny glances in his direction with a coy toss of his head and a wide grin, and Alex lets himself believe - however illogically - that he was heard. His own movements seem so small in compare, though for Alex every shift of muscle is felt acutely. It’s only when Danny pivots back toward him with a shiver that shakes him from hips to shoulders that Alex feels he can move freely again.

His friend’s thin waist is taut beneath his hands. Danny’s belly too is firmed by his movements, possessed of a wild strength that feels to Alex as he imagines intoxication might. A breath drawn through curls that seem suspended, floating in a glorious dark halo around his head, yields the scent of clean sweat and familiar pheromones. 

And when, on the seventh song, Danny is snared away from him by a tall man with a smile in his eyes, Alex watches him go. He moves as a thing enchanted and enchanting both, driven to feral grins and stroppy tosses of his hair, hips curling, hands clapping or thrust up towards the light as if in praise to it. Alex recalls reading of the Wild Hunt, and can see in Danny the way those men might too have moved, driven by the beating of drums and hearts alike.

The other man pulls Danny back against him, hands down his sides and onto his hips. Fighting down lesser instincts of possessiveness, Alex watches as Danny is pushed against another’s body. He wants to hate this. To some degree, he does. But to another, far smaller degree, it strikes Alex with a peculiar fascination that holds back an uncharacteristic desire to beat the bloody life out of the man touching his partner.

Danny arches back and draws a hand through the man's hair, tugging it and grinning before squirming to pull away. It becomes a tale told through dance, neither truly desiring to leave, neither uncomfortable, but the game is there, the play is there, teasing and swift and hot. Danny glances over his shoulder at Alex, and narrows his eyes, beckoning him closer with nothing more than a duck of his head and a brush of dark lashes against his cheeks.

He is lovely.

He is tempting.

And goddammit he is his.

Alex moves through the crowd as best he can, aiming to reach the glorious thing that moves like a nymph in the strobing lights. Danny grins at him, beckons him closer, reaches and sighs and laughs as Alex grazes their fingertips and loses them again. The touch resonates through him as loud as the music, pulse quick and thudding hard beneath his skin. The brief flirtation of their fingers spills bright light through Alex’s blood.

When he first saw Danny, drops of sweat glistening down his cheeks in the cool morning air, pupils still so wide that Alex could hardly make out the color of his eyes, it must have been after a night like this. Passed from partner to partner, writhing against any form strong enough to hold him caught, twisting free again only to be swept away once more. No wonder he looked so tired, undoubtedly driven further than his body’s limit by substances both biochemical and man-made. No wonder he looks so satisfied now, to be desired and adored by absolute strangers who touch him as reverent with want as if they were lovers.

Alex’s chest aches as Danny’s pulled close to another, chest to chest, brow to brow. He curls his arms over the man’s shoulder and their bodies twist together in sinuous unison. Another glance meets Alex’s eyes and the tension in his chest breaks into relief, to be seen and not forgotten.

A sideways turn slips him through the crowd, but as he strives to reach Danny, he’s caught himself. A slender young man with sun-bronzed hair and freckles dotted dark across tanned cheeks splays his hands over Alex’s chest. Alex only just remembers to move, staring into the wide green eyes that meet his own. His gaze slips just past, the intimacy too intense between he and a stranger in a place like this, but Alex can do little when the young man whispers a particularly filthy string of desires into Alex’s ear in Croatian.

He makes a sound, he knows he does, and unfamiliar hands slip against him to hold him close. The voice is so low and so warm that Alex feels as though he is being kissed by the words, warm breath left behind on his skin. He wants to. He thinks of the things brought up by the man who stole him so skillfully, he thinks of strange apartments and new bodies, and finds that every body he thinks of is Danny’s, with tiny birthmarks and little scars, curly hair and that wide mischievous grin.

Alex seeks back behind himself and catches Danny’s eye again, seeing him watch just as intently, smile just as coyly and curiously. His eyes narrow in a brief flicker of jealousy and he reaches through the bodies and the beat with splayed fingers again.

When the apex reaches too, they are just too far apart and he laughs as Danny does, squirming against the man who holds him now.

“Your pretty friend can come too,” he’s told.

Alex rests a hand against the small of the younger man’s back, as much to better track his writhing movements as to steady himself. He considers, genuinely, how it would feel to be held by two sets of hands rather than only one. How it would feel to be taken and to suck all at once. It’s naughty. It’s tempting. And Danny is far more adventurous than Alex, and has experimented in group sex before.

He told Alex once that he shouldn’t be his only.

Alex’s response then resonates with just as much truth now, and a chill that cools his blood.

He doesn’t want anyone else. He doesn’t need anyone else.

And the thought of Danny giving up his body and voice to someone else cuts Alex’s torrid imaginings off at the quick. He allows no more than his hand to lower, fingers curling around the younger man’s firm bottom. His lips part beside his ear.

“I’m taken,” Alex says in Croatian. “My pretty friend is my husband.”

He meant to say partner but whether due to dizzied senses or a Freudian slip, he lets the word stand and revels in the warmth it gives him. An entirely different heat than his thoughts of threesomes with strangers, an entirely unique intoxication beyond where hormonal impulse still plucks at his attention.

The young man lifts a brow and smiles wider, asking without speaking: _So?_

Alex laughs, pressing a hand to his face as he shakes his head. The temptation rises like a wave again and he sighs against the man who turns and ruts against him. Alex tilts his head back lazily and sees Danny nearer now, dancing alone again, watching Alex with delight and curiosity as he's whispered to.

Danny lifts a hand and beckons Alex near, coaxing him back to himself. His cheeks are flushed and his hair is damp and stuck in straggling curls against his forehead. Alex longs for him. He aches for him and needs him.

He wants him.

One more turn in the arms of the one holding him and he is left free, green eyes narrowed and brows lifted in genial allowance. They follow him as Alex finally catches Danny's hand and draws him near, as he presses their lips together hard and claims him as his own once more.

Danny clings to him and moans, shifting to the music still as the bodies around them do, out of necessity and position, but holding close to the only man he needs and wants above all others.

“I love you,” Danny tells him. “I love you and I won't let you go. Not with him, not with anybody.”

“You would stop me?” Alex asks, not in annoyance but in pleasant surprise. He wraps his arms around Danny’s middle and squeezes him close, their bodies shifting together in time with the incessant drumming music. “He invited me back to his flat, with his roommates.”

“I bet he did,” Danny says. He slips skinny arms around Alex’s waist and tucks his nose against his shoulder, squinting at the pretty young thing that sends him a wink before dancing away. “Would you go?”

“My question first,” smiles Alex, grasping Danny’s sweat-soaked curls, thick hair spiralling tendrils around his fingers. The flashing lights skim a cascade of colors across Danny’s skin, over the long bridge of his nose and his heavy brows, over high cheekbones and full, flushed lips. When Danny laughs, he’s glorious, lost in mirth and movement. Alex has never seen anyone so beautiful.

He’s certain he never will.

“Yes,” Danny finally says, grinning wide. “Yes, I’d stop you. I would drag you away from them by your collar.”

“I thought about it,” Alex admits, in answer to Danny’s question, “when he said you could come, too. It would be a new experience, undoubtedly exciting in the physical sense, but given an option…” He shrugs, broad shoulder rising and falling once.

“Given an option?”

“I would rather only have you,” he says. “And be had by you. And have no one else have you, either. I was overcome by a sudden urge to punch the man dancing with you.”

“You’re jealous,” Danny laughs.

Alex considers the word, in reflection of the tension that made his ribs feel too small for his lungs and his skin too tight. He consents inwardly that the word matches the sensation, and nods, open and earnest. Of course he was jealous, despite his prurient interest in watching Danny at a distance, writhing with another. Of course he’s jealous that anyone else might share with Danny what Alex has for so long now.

“Yes,” Alex says, ducking his head and breathing in the heady, masculine scent of Danny’s slick skin beneath him. “And I’ll be happy if this evening ends with you moving against me like this, beneath me, bare and bent over and begging for me to touch you in words like you’ve expressed with your body. I love you so much it hurts sometimes.”

Danny curses breathlessly and presses nearer, merely shifting to the music because others around them are. He wants nothing more than to take Alex home, to their temporary home, to the hotel they will share for the next few days. He wants nothing more than to have him close.

“Yes,” he breathes. “With you, against you, beneath you.” He bites his lip and winds their fingers together. “Take me home?”

With each giving narrow looks of victory to those who attempted to sway their other, Alex slips his arm around Danny’s shoulders and pulls him near. Danny grasps him by the waist in turn and pressed closely, they make their way to the door, parting the writhing squirm of bodies around them to reach it. Once there, Alex pauses, reaching into his pocket to retrieve the drink tickets they were given.

“What do we do with these?”

Danny bites his lip and considers them. Folding his hand over Alex’s own, he presses the tickets back to his pocket, lips brushing his cheek as he whispers, “Save them for tomorrow.”

“We’re coming back?” Alex laughs, happily dragged along behind Danny who winds his way towards the coat check to retrieve Alex’s wholly unnecessary blazer. Danny’s crooked smile is answer enough, and with their things in tow, they emerge out onto the street. Without missing a beat, Danny finds a cigarette from the crumpled pack in his back pocket. Alex tilts his head to the doorman who offers a good-natured grin.

With a plume of smoke trailing behind them, Danny’s body carries music in it even as it fades block by block. Every sway of hips holds Alex rapt. Every toss of his hair into the salty sea breeze shortens his breath. And by the time they reach the elevator, blessedly alone, Alex could no more stop himself from grabbing Danny close than he could stop his own breath. Firm hands hold him by the waist, and pull chests and bellies and hips together. Alex’s lips part against Danny’s own and he breathes out long and low, before he makes his newfound jealousy known in a rough kiss, pinning Danny to the elevator wall.

This power is not often shown so blatantly. Alex rarely flexes his strength in such a way and Danny can feel goosebumps crawl over his skin, from his scalp down to his toes, from how incredible this feels. He wants to be pinned by him. He wants to be pulled and pushed and handled. With a soft moan, Danny lets himself go pliant in Alex’s arms, hands in his hair and gently tugging the strands until Alex presses closer.

The elevator ticks on up to their floor as Danny draws up a leg against Alex’s hip and arches into him.

“He told me he would take me to the back room,” Danny laughs when he's allowed to breathe, fuelling this fire with soft words. “Broken English and menthol breath. He said...” The elevator arrives at their floor and Danny curls his fingers hard in Alex’s shirt. “He said he liked to be watched. Asked if you wanted to.”

Alex dampens his lips with the tip of his tongue, seeking between Danny’s eyes with intense focus. Like the energy created by fission, his desires crack apart and he bends, suddenly, hoisting Danny up to carry. Their room is close, and with one arm tucked under Danny’s backside, Alex fumbles with the key and finally knees the door open. It’s kicked shut behind and there in the little space beside the door, Alex shoves him hard to the wall again.

“I wanted to,” Alex moans against Danny’s throat. “I would like to see you, from a distance. Observe your pleasure without my own. I want to…” Danny pulls his hair again and Alex grits his teeth, sighing rough. It’s irrational. It’s hypocritical. Nothing in Alex’s head makes any sense right now, dizzied to confusion by his own desires. “But I don’t want anyone else to touch you, either.”

Danny shivers and draws his nails down Alex’s back, over his ass, back up again to cling to him as he trembles with need.

“I imagined how you would watch me,” Danny tells him, voice rough and cock straining in his pants. “As I arched my back and spread my legs and reached forward to grasp the sheets, I imagined how you would turn your head and blink and bite your lip. I imagined because I knew I would moan for you, even if you weren't touching me. I imagined because -”

“Danny...”

“Because I don’t want anyone else to touch me either. You. Just you. Just you, like this. Please, Alex -”

Lips catch between teeth as Alex smothers another harsh kiss across Danny’s mouth. He did not lose him to another, but all the same, primal instincts fill his head with single words - claim, mine, take. All day he’s watched his friend, playful and beautiful and bright. All night he’s watched Danny curve and bend and part his lips with crooked sighing smiles against his body and others.

He left with Alex.

He’s here with Alex.

And the sense of triumph is ecstatic. Alex pushes Danny’s legs down from his hips until his feet touch the floor. No sooner do they than he turns him towards the wall, a moan let loose low across his ear. Alex holds him firm around the waist with one arm, and the other hand he spreads demanding down the back of Danny’s trousers, inside his pants. Squeezing his ass, he drags his nails over flushed, soft skin. Seeking between his cheeks, Alex rubs his opening with two firm fingers, and finally gives voice to the words now possessing him.

“Mine,” he groans, dragging a kiss across Danny’s throat. “You are only mine.”

Danny's moan shivers from his lips and he curls his nails against the wall with a gentle scratch. Yes. Yes, he is Alex’s. The only man he has ever wanted to truly belong to - entirely, body, mind and soul. Alex, who has never forced him, has never humiliated or tormented him, who listened to him and comforted him, opened himself to him and loved him.

Loves him still.

Loves him always.

“Yours,” he whispers. “Yours, I’m yours, Alex.” He laughs, then, soft and surprised and lovely, and arches his back and spreads his legs. “Make me remember it. For days, weeks...” Danny laughs again. “Forever.”

Alex nearly trembles until a warm, heady moan steadies him. He unfastens Danny’s belt with one hand, his trousers next. They and his pants pool to the floor with a brusque shove down skinny, pointed hips, trapping Danny’s ankles from spreading wider. Stroking again, his whole hand rubbing hard between Danny’s cheeks, Alex kisses the curve of his neck where it meets his shoulder, suckling dark marks against tanned skin.

Lower, then, to the knobby bones at the base of his neck. Lower, then, between his shoulderblades. Lower to the small of his back as Alex drops to his knees.

He will give Danny what he might have had in the back room of the club. He too can be what Danny desires, in this way as well as others. The confidence is unfamiliar, but Alex does not allow himself to linger in consideration of it. Instead, he grasps Danny’s bottom and spreads his cheeks and runs his tongue hungrily between.

Danny makes a sound of surprise and pleasure both and folds his arms against the wall, nuzzling into them as he arches back harder. He has done this to Alex so often, has felt him shiver and tense and moan until he came. He has felt Alex near, this way, tentative licks and nudges and warm breaths, but he has never felt him this confident and forward. He has never felt him this hungry.

Danny drops one hand back and slips it through Alex’s hair, not to push or guide him but to hold on, to keep him close as slowly, deliberately, Alex brings Danny’s knees to quaking.

“God, you feel so good,” Danny whispers, rubbing his face against his arm, against the wall. “So fucking good…”

A low hum elicits laughter from him, resonant from Alex’s lips up through every nerve in Danny’s body. When Alex sucks, licks, presses his tongue inside, strokes with thumbs against tender twitching muscle, Danny delights in knowing that he taught Alex this. The pride in that pales only in compare to how fucking good it feels, energetic rather than timid, eager rather than uncertain. He never imagined that Alex would respond this way to jealousy, driven now by a dire need and desperate urge to prove himself against someone who never really stood a chance.

Danny’s not going to complain about it.

Alex holds him by the thighs, fingers pressing firm to quivering muscle. He laps and suckles the taste of sweat from between his lover’s legs, dipping his tongue down to the back of his balls, nuzzling back upward again. He lets himself be noisy, each damp click of spit and obscene suck tenting his pants higher. Fastidious tendencies fall apart as his mouth smears damp with saliva, spread up Danny’s back as he brings himself upward again.

One hand wraps around Danny’s jaw, the other between them to work open his trousers. He rubs against him, cock still trapped in his pants, coarse cotton growing damp with every rut against Danny’s ass.

“What did you say to him?” Alex asks. “When he said those things to you.”

For a moment, Danny doesn’t even hear him, shivering and tense in his pleasure. He turns his head and feels Alex’s cheek against his own and smiles. He thinks again of the accented voice, the insistence of his fingers and the practiced tenderness of his dance. It was a courting, for nothing more than a sweaty, pleasure-filled night.

“I told him I get off on being watched,” he admits, sucking his lip between his teeth again and letting it go with a sigh. “I told him that I wanted you there, that if he wanted me he would have to listen to you instruct him on how to touch me. How to fuck me properly.”

The thought again brings a spark of desire to Danny’s skin and his cock twitches higher against his stomach.

“I said he could fuck me as a proxy, if you told him how, and he listened.”

Alex’s shudder brings their bodies flush together in a hard shove, holding Danny between himself and the wall. He curses, the word so rare from Alex’s lips that Danny bites a moan behind his lips. Thumbs hooked in the waistband of his pants, Alex bares himself enough to free his cock and holds his free hand in front of Danny’s mouth.

“Spit,” he says, his voice scarcely above a murmur. The response is immediate, another keening whimper from his friend, who rounds his lips and deposits a dollop into Alex’s palm. A thread connects to his bottom lip, snapping free when Danny moans again, and Alex slicks himself with a few brisk strokes before lining up against him.

“Would you watch me,” Alex asks, holding back a moment more. He’s been teased enough, instructed enough, reveled in the loss of control enough to mimic Danny’s own abilities skillfully. Danny squirms back against him and Alex doesn’t let him move more than that, asking again, “Would you watch me, watching you be fucked by a stranger?”

Danny damn near sobs his answer and Alex slowly turns his hips to push into him, a deliberate tease against him, over and over in shallow thrusts.

“I wouldn’t take my eyes off of you,” Danny promises. 

“You would moan for me,” Alex asks, “by proxy.”

“Only for you,” whimpers Danny, fingernails digging against the cheap wallpaper. “Would you touch yourself?”

“No. I would wait,” he says. His voice drops to a groan as he pushes himself deeper into Danny, holding him upright as his body trembles. “I would wait, and have you myself after.”

“To remind me -”

“To remind you that you’re mine.”

“Fuck,” Danny whispers, shuddering and reaching back to find Alex’s hand to hold as Alex presses deeper in and holds himself there. Lips tickle against Danny’s cheek as Alex breathes softly against him but doesn't yet kiss. “I love you.”

When Alex pulls back, he keeps his pace slow but this thrusts deliberately deep. A hard taking without the cruelty, their fingers squeezing together as Danny bends himself against the wall and moans, unashamedly loud, for everything Alex does and will do to him.

It feels incredible. 

The knowledge that they were both tempted, that both were wanted and wanted no one but the other for themselves sends shivers through them both.

Soul mates, supersymmetry, it doesn't matter. They belong to the other in every way, in every possible universe. Their voices match their breath match their heartbeats for the other. Their bodies sync in harmonic concordance, steady thrusts and trembling hands. Alex holds Danny close as his knees begin to weaken. Danny whispers that he loves him when he feels Alex overwhelmed.

“You teased me,” Alex reminds him, mouth parted against Danny’s ear, quick breaths ruffling his hair. “When we were in the sea. Again in the club.”

Danny laughs, rubbing his brow against his arm. “Yes.”

Alex reaches between them, and in a motion too playful to be cruel and too firm to be anything but a new exploration for him, he smacks Danny’s bottom, once.

Danny yelps in surprise and tenses around Alex’s cock. How many times has this been done to him? How many men have bent him over and spanked him? How has it never felt this good before?

“I’d tease you more,” Danny promises, biting his lip as another spank coincides with a sharp thrust in. “Everywhere we went.”

Alex whispers something against him that Danny can't make out, but it doesn't matter. None of it matters, not at all.

“Do it again,” Danny begs, dropping his own hand down to stroke himself as he's fucked. He makes an embarrassing sound, a sobbing laugh, as his wrist is skillfully caught and placed back to the wall. No verbal instructions are needed to make clear what Alex wants from him - Danny can feel it in every thrust and every panted breath, in every murmured word against his skin and the clap of Alex’s hand against his ass.

“It isn’t nice to tease,” he notes, and Danny curls his fingers into fists, swallowing so hard it hurts. His voice splinters high as he’s spanked again, harder this time, enough that his skin stings hot from it. Inside him, Alex’s insistent thrusts seem as if they’ll tear him apart, the pressure and heat and friction unbearable.

He’s going to come without even touching himself.

Long fingers wrap in his hair and bend his head from the wall, arching his neck until his moans spill upward. He’s like an instrument, to Alex, a beautiful creation that is easy to play poorly and takes time to learn how to play well. Adjusting the pitch of Danny’s voice with the tightness of his fingers, he vibrates the core of his body faster with his other hand against his belly, spanning down to take his cock in hand.

“I love you,” Alex tells him, voice caught in his throat as it always does when he’s so near to climax. “I love you, Danny.”

Danny moans and shivers, whimpering against the wall as Alex presses into him again. He is close, he is so close, so close, so -

“Fuck,” Alex whispers against him and bends to bite against Danny’s skin as he comes. Pulse after pulse of heat within him and Danny follows him over. Both shuddering, shivering, moaning and panting, holding each other up.

Then Danny laughs.

“Alex, I’m gonna fall over if we don't move.”

“I won’t let you,” Alex murmurs, spreading sticky fingers under Danny’s shirt, across his belly to his waist. Danny’s voice is a tangle of pleasure, and Alex feels every single sound course through beneath his hand. Clumsy kiss after clumsy kiss keeps them tied, until slowly Alex works his cock free.

Danny bites his lip and whimpers as a bead of come trickles free and runs down the inside of his thigh. “My jeans...”

He reaches down to where they’re tangled around his ankles, but Alex takes the opportunity of offset center of balance to hoist his friend up into his arms, slung bridal-style across his elbows. Wide strides keep his own trousers around his hips until he can lay Danny down to bed and step free of them, quick hands moving to unlace Danny’s sneakers and bare him, stitch by careful stitch.

“The young man who danced with me asked me back to his flat,” Alex says as he works, removing each article of clothing in turn and folding them to set aside. “He said you could come along, and that he has roommates who would also like to ‘play’.”

Danny hums, pleased, and drags his underwear back to the bed to wipe himself clean. “That would be a good party,” he mumbles, snorting after and turning to lie on his belly, showing Alex the pinkened cheek he had spanked. “Would have been,” he amends, wiggling in bed.

Watching his pleased, aimless squirming, Alex runs his hand down Danny’s bare back, tickling fingertips over his ribs and down to the pale handprint left on his bottom. This he touches gently, reverently, studying the mark with disbelief that he was allowed to leave it there. Encouraged, even.

“It may have been,” he allows, ceasing his stroking touch just long enough to finish disrobing himself. “I told him you were my spouse. He wasn’t deterred by this,” Alex notes, curiously.

Danny laughs again and turns to his side to watch Alex as he makes his way onto the bed. There, Danny snares him close and wraps all his limbs around him, nuzzling Alex’s cheek. “You told him you were married?”

“Yes.”

“To me?”

“Yes,” Alex laughs. “I would marry no one else.”

“Neither,” Danny decides. “Neither. I don’t want anyone else. I love you.”

Alex’s smile lingers, sleepy and sedate, wholly content to be enwrapped in Danny’s arms and legs, to have his cheek nuzzled and kissed with soft little touches of lips. He works his own arms free enough to hold Danny in return. Alex holds a kiss in his hair, salty from sea and sweat.

“I enjoy imagining these things,” he says, now that his thoughts are clear enough for him to process, and his body purged of distracting desire. “But I don’t think I’m brave enough to do them.”

“I don’t need you to,” Danny says. “I don’t want you to.”

“Not even for a good party?”

Danny laughs, the sound easing to a sleepy sigh against Alex’s throat. “No,” he says. “You’re all the party I need.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Alex closes his eyes, uneasy. He is grounded in reality - many realities, to be fair, but all possible. All potentially reached through the right concordance of events. He did not play make-believe, even as a child, not as other children seemed to do. He knew he could not become a horse or a king. His daydreams were formulated from his education, his imagination bound to what he was obligated to achieve. But he lets himself slip into a manifold remembrance of the night before, another pathway chosen, another outcome…_

“You’re watching me.”

Alex smiles a little when the words curve past Danny’s lips. Without opening his eyes, with only a single brow raised, he knows. The vibrations of waking energy, perhaps, the molecular disruption of Alex’s attention enough to stir him. Danny drapes an arm across his eyes and turns his head, watching Alex from beneath.

“Yes,” Alex says, smile growing as Danny grins, crooked and half-asleep still. “Only for a little while.”

“What are you thinking about?”

Alex takes a moment to disentangle the many considerations of the morning, and order them by both prevalence and potential disruption of this quiet, sunlit moment. He reaches out, as if to touch Danny’s cheek, and then retracts his fingers. Danny turns to his side, facing him.

“You’re beautiful,” Alex says, “especially like this.”

“My hair’s a mess. I can feel it.”

“I can see it. I like it that way. The sun behind it makes every strand into gold.”

“What else?” Danny asks, because there is more than only that. There is more that woke Alex so early after being out so late. Danny knows because he always knows, and Alex brings himself closer, tucking his head beneath Danny’s chin, nose pressed to the hollow of his throat where it’s quiet and dark.

“I’m sorry,” he says, “for last night.”

Danny blinks, looking over Alex’s head towards the wall that shivers with shadows where the morning sun hits it. He turns with a soft sound to press his lips to golden hair and licks his lips.

“What for?”

“What I did to you,” Alex says. “The things I said. Considerations I should not have had with people I didn't know.”

Danny squirms against Alex and slips a leg over his hips to hold him closer still.

“I loved what we did,” he assures him. “I loved seeing you like that. Just as I love you like this. Sleepy and warm and quiet against me. You've nothing to be sorry for.”

“Then why do I feel guilty?”

With a sigh, Danny rests his cheek against Alex’s hair. Alex’s weakness, his emotional uncertainty, his unfamiliarity with his own human nature, is Danny’s strength. He cocoons him close, despite Alex’s greater size, and offers suggestion against his brow.

“It’s new to you,” he considers. “All of this, not only going out to a club. Flirtation and what it means, what it doesn’t mean. Desire.”

“I want you,” Alex says suddenly, leaning back enough to seek between Danny’s eyes. He shakes his head. “I only want you.”

“I want you too,” Danny tells him earnestly, smiling warmly when Alex’s brows draw together a little more in sweet unfounded worry. “I know you want me. But I know you got hard thinking about another man touching me while you watched. I saw you watching as we danced. I saw you want to keep watching. And that's alright. That’s normal and healthy, in any relationship. It is a sexual fantasy, a desire through thought without ever bringing it to action.”

Alex considers this, considers the complete lack of accusation or anger or distress in Danny’s features.

Danny cannot lie to him.

Danny never has.

“I don’t really want anyone else to touch you,” Alex says, though already the tension has begun to settle from his shoulders, sore from the hours laid in stark morning silence as he replayed again and again the things he said. The things he imagined. He laughs a little, abashed. “That’s terrible, isn’t it? I don’t want to be possessive.” He pauses. “But I think I’d have hit him.”

“I’d like to have seen that,” Danny grins, shaking his head in jest when Alex raises a brow at him. “No, no. Don’t hit anyone. But there was no harm in dancing, right?”

Alex shakes his head, too. “No. I want you to dance.”

“So there’s even less harm in imagining.”

“You don’t think it’s strange?” Alex asks. “To be aroused by that.”

Danny remains close as Alex turns to his back, laying at his side with a hand against his chest. “To be aroused by what?”

“You know.”

“I want you to say it,” Danny laughs, stroking through the soft hair on Alex’s chest. “If you say it aloud, it won’t seem as forbidden. Trust me.”

Alex does. He always does.

“To be aroused by the thought of watching you have sex with someone else,” Alex says, brow creasing as his blood changes direction in a dizzying rush, pooling hot in the pit of his belly.

Danny gently walks his fingers down Alex’s chest to his navel. He spreads his palm flat and warm against Alex’s stomach and rubs there. He can see the way his cock stands half-hard beneath the covers.

“No,” Danny tells him honestly. “Thoughts are the places we can feel safe to explore any and all desires that we will never dare to act out in person.” He settles with his cheek against Alex’s shoulder and looks up at him. “Sometimes I get so angry, I imagine starting a fight. A brutal fistfight where I hurt whoever is angering me. Sometimes I spend minutes at a time replaying it, adjusting the scenario, the level of violence, adding in things I would say…”

Danny bites his lip and lifts his face a little to look Alex in the eye. “In the safety of my mind I am a victor. I would never take a swing at anyone in person. I know how it feels, and it is never necessary. Do you see?” He watches Alex swallow, gently nod and blink at Danny before he continues. “Tell me why it aroused you, to think of me in bed with another man while you watched. What did you imagine?”

Alex closes his eyes, uneasy. He is grounded in reality - many realities, to be fair, but all possible. All potentially reached through the right concordance of events. He did not play make-believe, even as a child, not as other children seemed to do. He knew he could not become a horse or a king. His daydreams were formulated from his education, his imagination bound to what he was obligated to achieve. But he lets himself slip into a manifold remembrance of the night before, another pathway chosen, another outcome…

Their lips bend hard together, their joined breath a sharp hiss against the other’s cheek. Danny lays back onto his elbows beneath the larger man above. When he turns his head aside to allow the man access to his throat, his eyes - wide and blue and dark with pupils swollen wide in arousal - meet Alex’s own.

Alex tilts his head a little, fingers tightening against his stomach, against the arms of the chair where he sits watching. “Danny likes his hair pulled,” Alex says, flicking a glance to the man laying between his lover’s legs.

Hands thicker than Alex’s own seek through long curls and tug. A little too hard, a little too much, but Danny flushes pink and parts his lips and makes a sweet needy sound. He slips to be on his back, hands seeking against the man who presses him down.

He is so little beneath this unfamiliar body.

The man knows how to make love to a body, how to kiss and touch and stroke it to arousal. Alex watches as he slips a hand between them and into Danny’s jeans. Alex watches as Danny’s lips go slack and his eyes close. Alex watches as his blush grows and he squirms up against the person touching him.

“Tell him you want him to spread for you,” Alex adds softly. “He likes to be told.”

“Open your legs,” the man growls against Danny’s mouth. Danny’s knees tip to either side, toes curled and heels wrinkling the bedcover beneath as he pushes upward. He seeks a kiss and is denied, groaning low with want. “Wider.”

Alex brings a hand to his lap, thumb stroking once against his hardening cock. It’s okay for him to do this. Likely okay for him to do more. He puts his hand back to the arm of the chair and feels his gaze soften as Danny looks to him, breathless and bright-eyed and beseeching.

“Remove his clothes,” Alex suggests. “Leave your own on, but for what needs to be moved to free your erection.” He parts his lips with his tongue and shivers. “Danny likes to be dominated. He enjoys rough sex. Do not leave marks on his skin.”

Danny’s shirt is yanked from him, his laugh pressed to a moan by a rough kiss against his collarbone. His hands are allowed to explore the man above him, careful in his hair and down his back as his belt is pulled loose and tossed by the pillow. Danny turns to it, turns to Alex, grins and bites his lip.

Danny’s thighs and bottom are bared and he obediently immediately spreads his legs wide again.

“Hungry little thing, aren't you?” the man purrs against him. Danny just slips a hand between them to work the other’s belt open, his button and fly next.

To Alex, he is radiant. He is blushing and warm and beautiful, he is trembling and hard and tense. He is aching for a fuck. He is aching to be seen and to look at Alex as it happens. The thought is beyond thrilling, the sensation of phantom touch across Alex’s skin as electric as the real thing. He knows how Danny’s body feels against his own, above it, beneath, but always his enjoyment of Danny’s pleasure is experienced through the veil of his own physical satisfaction. Alex is distracted by himself, when they’re together, and this way, he is free to see and to savor, to observe the whole of Danny’s beauty without his own involvement.

The sense of invasion is there, too, and shamefully exciting. Coarse hands pushing Danny’s thighs wide and another’s cock shoved down against his own with a groaning rut, a stranger’s mouth smearing slick kisses and tangling their tongues together. It should hurt, to see his lover take such enjoyment of someone else like this. It makes Alex’s heart beat fast enough that he has to sigh to steady it, anger and insult and lust and desire tangled so thick in his throat he can scarcely breathe.

“There’s a word for this,” Alex says, the sound of his own voice unexpected. “To make a cuckold of someone.”

“Yes,” Danny whispers, across the room and close against him all at once. “Yes,” he says again, this time a long, high moan, as Alex blinks back to the room in which he sits, watching as the stranger grasps their cocks together.

“Make him wait to orgasm,” Alex says, licking dry lips to dampen them. “Tease him until he’s trembling. Use your fingers,” he adds. “Now.”

Danny laughs again, that helpless, nervous, breathless sound as he ducks his head to watch spit-slicked fingers line up against his hole. He moans when one presses in first, the rough hand still stroking himself and the other with rough twists and slow pulls. With the second finger he reaches out to where Alex sits, panting his pleasure and pleas at him.

There is great pleasure in watching. Watching is learning. Learning is understanding. Understanding is love.

“Curl them up,” Alex adds, voice roughened by desire. “Slip his foreskin back to bare him. Remind him not to come.”

Things Alex is too nervous to say aloud, things he cannot voice even though he can imagine them. Things he wants Danny to feel, knows Danny will love. Things he delights in imagining giving him. It’s easier without his own faltering movements to pull his attention away. It’s easier without the worry that he’s doing too much or not enough.

The man murmurs Croatian against Danny’s ear, bending both fingers to seek out the place inside him that Danny showed Alex by example. The response is immediate, a keening sound and an arch so hard that Danny bridges from the bed. His fingers clench against the man’s shoulders, scrabbling to hold on as his body is curved into undulations of thrusting up into the hand that strokes him, down against the fingers that spread him wide.

“There are condoms in the drawer beside the bed,” Alex says. “Danny.”

Wide blue eyes flash to meet his own. Red lips swollen with lust and harsh kisses part and flash a hint of broad white teeth. “Alex,” Danny moans.

“Put the condom on him, please. Use your mouth.”

Danny laughs again, squirming into the bed. The fingers continue their blissful torment within him but his cock is let go to twitch and leak against his stomach.

He watches only Alex as the man fumbles in the drawer. He watches only Alex as the condom is tossed softly against his stomach. The fingers slip free of him and Danny is encouraged to get on his knees. 

Although he smiles at the man before him, nose wrinkling in pleasure as he tears the little foil packet with his teeth, his eyes go to Alex when he sets the rubber between his lips and bends. Danny moans as he works the condom onto the stiff cock before him, fingers helping but lips and tongue doing most of the work.

He is lovely. He is wanton. He is temptation incarnate.

Danny keeps his lips on the man’s cock as fingers find his hole again and press in once more, at Alex’s quietly murmured instruction. Only in the moments that Danny’s eyes flutter closed does their gaze break. Another man’s cock between his lips, glistening wet as he bobs forward and back around it, Danny holds Alex’s attention rapt.

“Touch yourself,” Alex says, drawing a sharp breath as Danny reaches between his legs and moans around the stranger’s stiff erection. He looks so small, compared to how overwhelming he feels when they’re together, bent over his knees beneath the other’s body. The man holds Danny’s cheeks wide and spits against his hole, fingering him so quickly that Alex can hear the clicking damp sound of it, can see the vibrations of penetration and pleasure clench through Danny’s body.

“Don’t come,” the man reminds Danny. “Not until I’m done with you.”

Alex raises a brow and smiles a little, pleased unexpectedly by his proxy’s declaration. “Watch him while he sucks. Hold his hair with one hand, and with the other, softly slap his cheek.”

Danny barely has time to look up before a sharp little slap strikes his cheek and he squirms hard into his own hand. There is no pain, there is just a reminder, just a game between them. Another slap and Danny mumbles pleading words against the cock in his mouth. When it slips from his lips Danny laughs and squirms harder. 

“I really want to come,” he admits, twisting as he's turned onto his back, and spreading his legs wide. “Alex...”

“Fuck him,” Alex instructs softly, stroking himself hard, with quick pulls made slick by his own precome. “Don't touch his cock again, make him come from sex alone.”

“Little beauty,” the man groans against his cheek, turning Danny’s head aside. Neither dark wild curls nor long lashes hooded heavy can hide the intensity of Danny’s attention as it focuses on Alex. His lips spread when he’s breached, mouth wide and breathless. His ribs strain against his smooth skin, blotched bright and blushing down to his chest. He clutches his hair and pulls, splinting the slap of skin against skin with an aching moan of Alex’s name.

Pinned and fucked, thrust into with stiff jerks hard enough to rattle the bed, Danny can do no more than take it, voice breaking into unsteady staccato with every rough penetration. Alex matches the rhythm of his own strokes to this swift and savage taking, overwhelmed, undone by his lover’s pleasure, the pleasure he experiences with another, the pleasure given to him by a stranger from a club, someone he doesn’t know, someone that isn’t Alex, inside Danny, his Danny, fucking him, fucking…

“Fuck,” Alex whispers, jaw falling slack as he clutches his cock and comes hard against his belly with a groan.

Danny kisses against his temple, against his cheek, moans softly under his jaw as he breathes in Alex’s sweat and the smell of his arousal. He is so wonderful, his mind exquisite. 

“Did that feel good?”

“Yes,” Alex pants softly, licking his lips and tilting his head for Danny to kiss and nuzzle him more. “The… the mental image of you. Of...”

“I could listen to you speak forever,” Danny tells him, humming his pleasure. “You make me sound so beautiful. I love hearing how you see me.”

“You are beautiful,” Alex laughs, his embarrassment hardly the weighty guilt it was before but something sweeter, shyer. “I couldn’t see you as anything else. I can only describe you as you are.”

Danny brings their mouths together, holding a kiss against Alex’s lips as he rolls atop him, spread-legged over his belly with no mind at all for the mess between them. Alex’s mind is extraordinary, Danny knew that before. But to see him given over to desire instead of algorithms, to hear the workings of his inner wants rather than formulas and theories, is as unexpected as it is unforgettable. Every detail, every movement, every bead of sweat and gasp, every thought and conflict and need spoken without the restraint that normally binds him.

“I love you,” Alex tells him. Danny smiles and strokes his cheek, palm resting against his jaw.

“I’ve never doubted that.”

With a small smile, earnest and little, Alex rests his cheek against Danny’s hand. “You’re hard.”

“Listening to what you imagined, how could I not be?”

Alex hums. “You said last night…”

“Tell me.”

“It would have been a good party, with that young man and his friends,” he ventures. “And you. And me.”

Danny grins, rocking teasingly against Alex. “It would have been,” he repeats. “All of us working so hard to give you pleasure.”

“Why me?”

“Because he asked you by,” Danny reminds him. “Not me, you. You asked me to be there.”

Alex blinks as though entirely overtaken by this idea. That he could be wanted when Danny is right there, right near him. But it was as Danny says, Alex had been asked.

“All of you?” Alex asks, and Danny nods, kissing his partner languidly. Alex draws a deep breath as their lips part and past, their tongues softly brush before closing together again. He rubs up the center of Danny’s chest, across a stiff little nipple, and back down to his belly, already flattened with want.

“How many do you think there were, waiting for you?” Danny muses.

“I don’t know,” Alex says. “He didn’t say. He said ‘flatmates’ but…”

“How many would you want there to be?”

Alex’s brow knits and he laughs, shaking his head. He tilts his cheek against the pillow, thumbing absently over Danny’s navel. “You aren’t jealous?”

“That other men want to get in bed with you? I’d be shocked if they didn’t.” Danny catches his jaw gently and turns his attention back, grinning. “How many, Alex?”

“Three?” He says, helpless to Danny’s sway, but not at all unhappy despite the dusky blush beneath his eyes. “And you, so four? Danny, I don’t know.”

“Four,” Danny purrs, bringing a thumb to his teeth to gently bite against. “God, look at us all.”

The young men are light haired and dark eyed, wide smiles and lithe forms. The one who has tugged Alex close the night before now stands on Alex’s other side and noses against his hair.

“We have a bed just big enough,” he says, voice accented and low. “All for us to play, if you want?”

“He does,” Danny says. “My husband is so shy until his voice just pours from him.”

Alex draws a breath to speak, undoubtedly to deny Danny’s claim or decline the night entirely, but the words never come. They manifest instead in a soft moan as the young man wraps his arms around Alex’s middle and runs his hands up onto his chest. Alex’s lips hang parted for Danny as a kiss is placed between his shoulder blades, wide eyes flickering to the movement of clothing peeled away by the two who have yet to join them.

“You’re lucky to be married to a man like this,” the young man says with a smile, and Alex looks back across his shoulder, sighing as he’s kissed on the corner of his mouth.

“I’m the lucky one,” Alex insists, and Danny laughs. He kisses Alex’s hand, his shoulder, up to his neck. He joins the young man teasing Alex’s lips apart and with three mouths moving together, they kiss in a clumsy, thrilling tangle.

More hands, then, that guide and stroke and softly touch against them all as they make their way - a many legged beast - to the large bed in one of the rooms. Danny slips beneath the arm of the man holding Alex and kisses him next, bringing his hands up to start on the buttons of Alex’s shirt.

“Is he ticklish?”

“Very.”

“Sensitive?”

“Try,” Danny suggests, laughing when one of the two young men who had met them at the flat draws his fingers carefully over a little pink nipple.

Alex laughs despite his nerves, the crease smoothing from his brow. He squirms higher onto the bed to avoid another touch, only to find a hand against his cheek and his lips parted but ones he’s not yet kissed. Danny has experienced his share of orgies before. He’s been a plaything and the one directing, the used and the user. Most men who find themselves the centerpiece to the vortex of limbs and mouths and bodies centered on their own make demands.

Alex does nothing of the sort, as submissive now as he naturally is for Danny when they’re alone. He lifts his arms when his shirt is slid off over his head. He raises his hips for his trousers to be slid down and off. He kisses whatever mouth demands it of him, grasping the flaxen hair of one boy as he looks to the next and sinks against his lips in turn.

Sly fingers grasp his thighs and he tenses, tickled and surprised all at once by the unexpected touch. Only his pants remain, and though his cock stands rigid beneath, he looks to Danny with desperate amusement. There is a young man to one side, two to the other. His hands are lifted from his body and brought to their cocks and his eyes flutter closed with a helpless sound.

“He responds best to touch,” Danny says, slinking on his knees to sit between Alex’s own. “It is the language he most intimately understands.”

“Are you gentle with him?”

“I love to be gentle with him,” Danny replies with a soft moan, reaching to stroke Alex through his pants. “It undoes him so entirely. I love to tease him.”

A mouth presses to Alex’s chest and he laughs again, arching up, allowing his legs to be spread wider by now-familiar hands. Another mouth licks teasingly against the rim of his navel.

Danny’s fingers trace the elastic of Alex’s pants and slip beneath it just under his bottom. Inch by inch he shifts closer, fingers gently spreading Alex open until Danny can stroke the sensitive clenching muscle between his legs.

“Kiss him here,” he suggests, tracing the throbbing thick vein on Alex’s cock.

“You don’t have to,” Alex says, though the wideness of his eyes betrays the desire beneath this polite insistence.

“I know I don’t,” the young man answers, grinning wide as he lowers his head. “I want to.”

The tip of his tongue traces teasing across the dark vein Danny marked with fingertips. He closes his lips in a sweet kiss, gently suckling, and Alex’s moan sounds almost like a laugh. The sound is kissed from him by the boy laying highest beside him on the bed, and Alex lifts an uncertain hand to his cheek that grasps assured as their kiss deepens. His hips raise to meet the young man’s mouth around his cock, they lower to feel Danny’s touch firmer against his opening. The fourth of their party circles Alex’s nipple with his tongue and Danny grins as Alex hardens his stomach, suppressing the urge to come already.

He’s never been with anyone else. He’s never felt another’s mouth or hands or cock or ass. He knows only Danny, wants only Danny, but in this humid room filled with the clicking sounds of damp mouths and the rough sighed moans of shared pleasure, Alex is allowed to be greedy. He wants to taste all of them, touch all of them. He wants to be fucked by all of them and Danny can read it in his eyes clear as day as Alex looks sidelong to him, tongue flashing bright into another’s mouth.

“God, you're so hot,” he sighs, gently stroking his knuckles against the face of the young man so adoringly laving Alex’s cock with his tongue. He sits back for just a moment, and brings his hands up to help Danny bare Alex for them all.

“Turn over?” One of the men asks, and Alex does, laughing as he works his legs from his underwear, as he feels Danny’s nose trace the curve that moves from thigh to ass before he kisses the sensitive skin there.

“Do you want to touch me?” Another boy asks, and Alex feels them all blur together into a single beautiful entity with many arms and many voices, sweet breaths and hot tongues. He nods.

Slender fingers guide his chin up and Alex parts his lips to suck against sensitive hairless skin, finding a nipple beneath his tongue and eagerly setting his teeth to it in a playful bite. One hand seeks as well, to curl around the young thing he's so happily devouring and pull him near. Alex’s kisses slick hot against flat stomach and high hip bones as the young man raises laughing to his knees, head tossed back and bottom lip catching between his teeth.

Alex curls his tongue around the cock presented to him, mouthing around the new shape of it, an unfamiliar girth, a unique taste just a little different from Danny’s or his own. His brows furrow and he takes him deep, nuzzling the soft skin of his stomach before drawing back. He scarcely makes eye contact with the young man above him before the one at his other side grasps his hair and brings him close against his groin in turn.

“Touch them both,” Danny tells him, doing little more now than keeping contact with Alex in words and touch. He strokes against his stomach, soothing him and grounding him. Alex takes the cock he just sucked in one hand as he wraps his lips around the other, cheeks hollowed around the head alone. His lips part slick, joined by threads of spit, as he’s taken to the hilt in the third young man’s mouth. Danny strokes his hair, guiding him gently.

“It’s too much,” Alex laughs, trembling. “I want to do everything, I can’t keep track of anything…”

“Stop thinking,” Danny soothes him, kissing his cheek as another mouth gently bites against his lower lip and tugs it. “Don't think.”

“I can’t...”

“Let your body move how it wants to. Trust it.”

“It feels overwhelming,” Alex laughs, still stroking one boy as he bends his body to nuzzle against the slick tip of the other cock he has been sucking. “It’s too good.”

“Breathe,” Danny tells him. “Breathe and trust yourself on this. Trust me.”

Alex’s throat jerks as he swallows, breathless, sides heaving in pleasure, in exertion, in want for all of them at once. In his eyes, wide and seeking, is disbelief despite Danny’s earlier insistence and the confirmation given to him by the company of so many. “I don’t feel like I deserve this,” he laughs, leaning back to suckle the first boy once more.

Danny slicks his fingers in the mouth of the young man eagerly and gently servicing Alex’s cock. Run alongside his length, he strokes himself as the boy’s tongue curls around his fingers, bright eyes narrowed in amusement. Danny grins as he slips them free, and bends enough to kiss the corner of his mouth.

The contact of his fingers against Alex’s opening jerks a moan from him. He strokes in unpracticed tugs the two boys kneeling at his head, their mouths twisting sinuous together above him. A single new partner would be a fascination for him. Danny still provides that, every time they touch. But so many new sensations, new means of conveying desire, new sights and sounds and tastes has brought him already precariously close to climax, and he shakes his head a little in warning as Danny aligns himself against Alex’s entrance.

“Trust me,” Danny tells him, grinning wide as both boys jut their cocks against Alex’s parted lips, and he rocks his hips into him.

Alex shudders, one hand out for balance as he kisses sloppy down the side of one cock and moves to the other. He feels filled and overly hot. The boy sucking him brings a hand up against his balls and softly tugs them and Alex moans against the head of the one cock he has managed to return his attention to.

Cool fingers seek down to tweak his nipples, another hand moves through his hair and scrapes dull nails against his scalp.

Alex realizes he can’t concentrate on any one thing when so much is happening. It feels too good. He feels like he's drowning when Danny presses deeper into him, when Alex shudders in involuntary but very welcome pleasure and rocks his cock deeper into the mouth that eagerly sucks him.

“I’m going to come,” he whispers.

“Come,” another voice tells him. “Come on.”

“Danny,” Alex moans, and Danny arches from the sensation of wide hands spread against his thighs. The pressure around Danny’s cock tightens, but he doesn’t allow his eyes to open, watching his friend, his lover overwhelmed by the affections of beautiful young men, himself another amongst them eager to give him pleasure. He strokes faster, tilting in a shivering twist into the hand that curls in his hair and drags him low…

His moan breaks against Alex’s mouth, as his release ripples in crashing waves from his body. Striping Alex’s chest with come, ribboning his belly in thick white drips, Danny’s breath comes in aching panting little gasps as Alex kisses cheeks and lips and brow and nose. He’s turned to his back as Alex lays heavy atop, a single thrust against the hollow of his thigh enough for a second, weaker climax to shiver free onto Danny’s stomach.

“Surrounded by three beautiful men and you would still be the only one I look at, the only one I want,” Danny whispers to him, stroking Alex’s hair from his face, grinning when Alex bends to kiss him.

“You would have them all undo me at once?”

“I would have you feel worshipped,” Danny tells him. “I would have you feel like you deserve every and all pleasures.”

“You overwhelm me as it is,” Alex says, so genuine that Danny laughs, hand splayed against his face, and Alex grins. “But I like that you would want me to know that, with others. All the ways they’re different, new experiences…”

“Would you like that?”

“I’m sure I would,” he laughs, gently removing Danny’s hand from over his face to kiss him, as slowly he lays down half atop his friend, and half beside him. He draws his nose softly against Danny’s cheek, rough with stubble and hotly blushing. “But I’d still want you the most.”

Danny turns to nuzzle him in return, turning one wrist to stroke Alex's hair.

“Did it feel good telling me your fantasy?” Danny asks him softly. “Seeing how hard and happy it made us both?”

“Yes,” Alex says, eyes closing beneath the gentle touches, lips closing again and again in little touches against Danny’s own.

“Do you still feel guilty?”

Alex shakes his head and his smile widens. “No. Could we do it again?”

Danny’s smile is bright, wide enough to close his eyes before he laughs silently against his partner. He turns to his side to face him fully, setting his hands on either side of Alex’s face before pressing their foreheads together.

“For any fantasy,” he murmurs. “Any time you want. Any time you think about me...”

“I think about you often,” Alex admits, and Danny laughs again.

“Any time you want to tell me, I will always find a fantasy to tell you.”

“You have others?” Alex asks. It’s the promise of new experiences, without the discomfort. It’s the promise of new knowledge, conveyed to him by the one from whom he has already learned so much. It’s the promise of hot whispers and hotter hands, shared in secret trysts.

Danny just grins, soothing a hand through Alex’s hair to ease him towards the sleep that tugs their bodies heavy. “We’ve only just started.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We have a couple more Supersymmetry timestamps to share with you after this, and then - if the stars align and we're able to navigate them effectively - maybe something a little longer, too. ;) Thank you so much for reading and sticking with us, and we hope you'll subscribe and continue to check in.
> 
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